I want to complain about my experience with 1.4.5, in particular about the “Sync new children of partial folders” option being deselected by default. I am very confused, and I hope that the following explanation of my confusion can lead to improvements.
For me, the primary purpose of Insync is to synchronize Google Drive with my Linux desktop. I want this process to be automatic. I don’t want to have to constantly check whether or not it’s doing its job.
As far as I could tell, when I was using a previous version of Insync, all files were automatically being both uploaded and downloaded to my desktop. At some point I upgraded to 1.4.5, but I don’t know whether or not this has to do with anything. To my surprise, I just noticed that new files created outside my desktop were not automatically being downloaded to my desktop. I consider this a severe failure of Insync! After searching on the forum, I realized that new files would only be downloaded when I manually select “Sync all items”. After quite a bit of further searching, I realized that files are downloaded automatically if I turn on “Sync new children of partial folders.”
I don’t understand what went wrong, and I am left with so many unanswered questions:
- What the heck is a “partial folder”?
- Why is “My Drive” considered a “partial folder”?
- Why isn’t this option named something understandable like “Automatically download new items”?
- Was this introduced as new default behavior in 1.4.5?
- If so, why was I not notified and given the option to select this as my desired behavior? (If I was notified, I somehow missed it.)
- Is 1.4.5 considered a stable version or a beta version?
- If 1.4.5 is considered a beta version, then why did I receive a notification that I should upgrade, without a warning?
I am frustrated to have lost over an hour of my time tracking down this issue. While it’s possible I’m completely confused, I feel like the answers to the above questions should be more clear to me. In case I missed something, please let me know. Otherwise, I hope that going forward there can be better communication about these sorts of issues.
You don’t need to answer the questions I ask above. I ask only that these sorts of things are better communicated in the future.
My confusion aside, thanks for making such an excellent product.